Stories on a Fleeing Ship
by fragrantfields
Summary: A/U, Bill/Laura (in a way): A apocalyptic catastrophe sends a ship of survivors on a dystopian odyssey. Young Marta barely remembers what it was like before. The only relief to the tedium of survival is her mother's way with words, as she weaves an on-going story containing much more life.
Life was lines.

Lines to get water for the day.

Lines to get a thin scrap of cloth, a squirt of soap, a cup of unfiltered water every five days.

Lines to trudge around the deck in orderly intervals, thirty minutes at a time, three times a day.

Lines to get calorie rations twice a day, calculated by complicated algorithms and measured out like arcane blessings.

On her birthday (Marta's mother still honors birthdays) Marta will get a calorie increase, her mother tells her. She remembers what cake tasted like, pink and happy. Her mother tells her pink isn't a taste but doesn't argue the point.

Marta thinks her mother used to have different hair, red and curling and shiny in the sun. There hasn't been sun since they got on the ship. Her mother's hair is straggly and dull, and short from she went spacy and hacked into it with a knife. She said it was because it got tangled in the machinery that makes the ship run, in the giant rooms where she goes every other day, but Marta thinks she was mad because it wasn't pretty any more.

Nothing much is pretty any more.

Marta's daddy was kind of pretty, she thinks. Her mother tells her that men aren't supposed to be pretty, they're supposed to be handsome. Her daddy was a left-behind. She asks her mother if her daddy is handsome and her mother nods but won't say any more.

There are three kinds of people: bosses, the ones that give out calories and water, and tell people what their work is; runners, like Marta and her mother and everyone that she knows or sees; and the left-behinds. They're the ones who never got on the ship. They never got a chance to run away. They're nothing, now, just thoughts. Like her daddy, and the kids next door, and her teacher. Her mother says left-behinds don't get hungry, or tired, or cry, or fight.

Her mother cries sometimes and goes spacy and wishes she was a left-behind instead of a runner. She says she gets so tired of running and it won't ever stop.

Sometimes, though, her mother tells Marta stories. Before she was a runner, her mother was a writer. Nobody writes anymore, but her mother writes with her head and her mouth sometimes, when she's not too tired. It was just for Marta at first, but several of the runners in their deck quadrant have started to listen. A couple have asked her mother to make this happen or that happen, and she tries, before she gets sleepy.

The calories are supposed to be enough for work and a little exercise, and when you run out, it's time to sleep. The little kids don't remember any other way. Marta's mother tells her she'll forget what it used to be like to live outside a ship, and it'll be better then.

Twice a week is story time. Marta's mother leans up against her spot at the bulkhead and starts describing a Fleet of ships that are runners, like them, but different. They have big rations of food, and lots of water to drink, enough that people can stand under cups and cups of water flowing all over themselves. Kids can play and read.

They have cake, sometimes.

And this Fleet has adventures, and the bosses are nice, and have faces and names and talk to people. There's a woman boss, with red hair like her mother's used to be, and she tells everybody what to do, except the soldiers. They have a man boss, and he's handsome and dark, and when her mother's so tired her voice gets soft, she says he's got a little belly, just enough to know it's there, and his arms are so strong and safe.

Marta doesn't really understand this. She's never seen anyone with a belly like her mother describes. Her mother doesn't try to explain that anymore.

The two bosses run everything together, and their Fleet is their family. They take care of everyone in the Fleet, and they get to know the people. They give speeches and make everybody feel better. Marta has never talked to one of the bosses on the ship. Unnecessary communication, her mother says. Soon she'll be old enough to work, and then they'll talk to her.

In her mother's stories, the man and the lady love each other but it's a secret, but not really because most people just know by how they act. They dance together, to music. They read books. They hug each other. They smile when they think no one's looking.

People have asked for names, details. Her mother gives them names of their mailman, and Marta's first grade teacher.

 _William._

 _Laura._

One by one, the people who come to listen ask that she put in a girl named Kara. A boy named Lee. One lady with a mean smile asked that an asshole be in the story and his name should be Baltar. Marta's mother told her to hush when she asked what an asshole was, and the lady laughed. Someone listening asks for a name for the ship. Her mother says Galactica. Marta doesn't know where she got that from.

One of the older kids asked her mother if William and Laura have sex. Somebody else said of course they did…in her mother's stories, people have enough to eat and don't work all the time. Her mother tried to explain sex to her once, but it didn't make sense. She tried to explain bleeding, babies, and good feelings. But Marta doesn't know any women or girls who bleed. Nobody has babies that she knows of. Her mother thinks there might be some babies and girls who get more calories on other decks.

Nothing feels particularly good here.

Marta dreams about these people when she sleeps sometimes. Their ship feels different from Marta's ship. People run and fight and play, and William and Laura kiss sometimes, like she remembers her daddy kissing her mother before he was a left-behind.

Her mother says people didn't used to sleep twelve hours at a time and it makes her sad. Marta doesn't mind, as long as she gets stories.

The stories that give her Galactica dreams.


End file.
